>That was partly Eliot's own fault of course, as far as I know he had no
problems with it becoming a dry academic obsession, encouraged it even. A similar
thing was happening over here with his work and the generation of Auden etc
reacted to that and other aspects of Eliot, as we know. Consequent events, the
War, the post-war rise of the Movement in UK, all pushed Eliot's poetry to the
margins, though he continued to have a profound influence on isolated
individuals. I am really referring to his poetry here, the criticism is something else,
a much more complex subject when it comes to influence and the subsequent
road taken by mainstream British poetry.
Tim A.<
One of the difficulties of talking about Eliot as a poet is the question of which Eliot? The brilliant post-Laforgue self-ironist of
Prufock (who does hold Larkin in his cloak), the grandiloquent defeatist of Gerontion (who anticipates Sam Beckett), the snazzy
observer of Mr Appollinax, the
I-am-having-a-nervous-breakdown-in-multiple-languages-because-of-Viv-but-will-do-that-with-a-vocabulary-of- much-of-literature of
The Waste Land, the depressing minimalist of The Hollow Men, the neo-Dantesque lyricist of Ash Wednesday, the Anglican performance
poet of The Rock and Murder in the Cathedral, the war we are going through public bard of Four Quartets? They are all the same
Eliot, and, as has been observed, he made much out of very little, but he did the police in different voices, most brilliantly,
perhaps, in the weird and disturbingly misogynist Sweeney Agonistes, or the creepily pro-fascist and mind-blowing Coriolan, which
stylistically, open up a full range of register. He was a mimic, and an extraordinary one.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 10:28 AM
Subject: Eliot: was performance poetry
Bob is pretty close to the mark with:
>"One of the reasons, I feel, that Eliot didn't
influence later writers in the way one would expect is because the New
Criticism sprung up around his work and translated it very quickly into
an academic obsession. This meant that in the period of time where one
might expect to see his influence one instead saw younger poets reacting
*against* his ideas"<
That was partly Eliot's own fault of course, as far as I know he had no
problems with it becoming a dry academic obsession, encouraged it even. A similar
thing was happening over here with his work and the generation of Auden etc
reacted to that and other aspects of Eliot, as we know. Consequent events, the
War, the post-war rise of the Movement in UK, all pushed Eliot's poetry to the
margins, though he continued to have a profound influence on isolated
individuals. I am really referring to his poetry here, the criticism is something else,
a much more complex subject when it comes to influence and the subsequent
road taken by mainstream British poetry.
Tim A.
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